Here Are New York's MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Winners

NEW YORK CITY — New York has more geniuses than anywhere in the world. Five New Yorkers are among the two dozen artists, scientists, musicians and writers who won "genius" grants through the MacArthur Foundation's MacArthur Fellows Program.

The group includes a journalist, a playwright, a performance artist, a landscape architect and an immunologist. Each one gets $625,000 with "no strings attached" to pursue any project they want, the foundation says.

This year the Big Apple claimed more winners than any other single place. Four come from Chicago and three come from Los Angeles.

Watch: Here Are New York's MacArthur 'Genius' Grant Winners

Here are New York City's winners and what they did to earn the prestigious honor.

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Annie Baker, playwright

Originally from Massachusetts, Baker, 36, got her bachelor's degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and master's degree from Brooklyn College. She has long worked as a playwright in New York City and is now the resident playwright at Signature Theater. Baker is famous for her trilogy of plays set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont, focus on "seemingly simple stories about ordinary, working-class people facing familiar predicaments," the MacArthur Foundation says. Her 2013 play "The Flick," which premiered at Midtown's Playwrights Horizons theater, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

"With a keen ear for the subtleties of everyday speech, a masterful command of dramatic structure, and a willingness to allow silences to linger on stage (often to a point of discomfort), she brings to life the erratic rhythms of human interaction," the MacArthur Foundation says of Baker.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, journalist

Hannah-Jones, 41, an Iowa native, is a writer for The New York Times Magazine who has won recognition for her deep work documenting "the persistence of segregation in American society," the MacArthur Foundation says. She spent several months in Ferguson, Missouri investigating a program aimed at integrating a high-achieving, nearly all-white school district 30 miles from where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in 2014. Last year, she wrote for the Times about her experience as a black public school parent in New York City in a piece titled "Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City." She also co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which aims to grow the number of news reporters and editors of color.

"Currently at work on a book about school segregation, Hannah-Jones is compelling us to confront segregation as a fundamental cause of racial disparities and reshaping national conversations about education reform," the MacArthur Foundation wrote.

Taylor Mac, theater artist

Mac, 44, is a California native who moved to New York in 1994. Mac's experimental performances draw from many genres "to inspire a reconsideration of assumptions about gender, identity, ethnicity, and performance itself," the MacArthur Foundation says. A graduate of NoMad's American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Mac has won acclaim for several works, including "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music," a 24-hour performance that examines American history from a queer perspective. Mac performed the entire show in one sitting last year at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, which The New York Times named one of 2016's best performances.

"With these and other works, Mac is challenging audiences to reimagine our relationships to one another and demonstrating ways in which the arts can be a tool for inspiring social change," the MacArthur Foundation said.

Kate Orff, landscape architect

Orff, 45, is a founder of SCAPE, a Financial District-based landscape architecture firm that has worked on many projects around New York City, from the 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem to a new firehouse in Crown Heights. After Superstorm Sandy damaged the city in 2012, Orff designed the Living Breakwaters, a landscape that protects against erosion and supports the growth of natural habitats. Construction is set to start in 2018 on the project, which also includes community education centers. Orff is also the director of the Urban Design program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

"Orff's resourceful design approach calls attention to the most distinctive natural attributes of a given place, while her collaborations and community outreach strategies extend the boundaries of traditional landscape architecture," the MacArthur Foundation said.

Gabriel Victora, immunologist

Victora, 44, is a professor at Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side whose research focuses on how cells develop immunity over time. Using imaging methods that he has helped improve, Victora's research has shown that cells produce disease-fighting antibodies in a process similar to natural evolution, "as had been previously theorized but not demonstrated," the MacArthur Foundation said. Originally from Brazil, Victora got his Ph.D. from New York University Medical School and has had articles published in scientific journals including "Science," "Nature," "Cell," "Immunity" and "Nature Immunology."

Victora's research "has practical implications for the development of new and more effective vaccines," the MacArthur Foundation said.

(All photos courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)